31st Century
	#71

In a far possible future of the MV1 universe, several heroes of varying races stand together to combat injustices of any kind! They are the Guardians of the Galaxy - Vance Astrovik, Aleta, Charlie-27, Martinex, Starhawk, Nikki, Yondu, Talon, and Hollywood!

"Crime and Punishment, part 1"

The Return of.... the Punishers!

by Adrian Watts

PREVIOUSLY...

The Guardians of the Galaxy were enlisted by Dr. Doom to travel to the world of K'rann to retrieve Mjolnir, the hammer of Thor, the god of thunder! There, they faced many trials and tribulations, and when they returned to Doom's base, they refused to hand it over! But then Aleta proved Doom can be trusted, and when the hammer was handed to him, he tapped it three times against the wall, resurrecting Thor, the Asgardian god of thunder! And then, Talon, another Guardian, sent in a mayday call - it seems the Punishers, long-gone enemies of the Guardians, are back....

New York, Earth. 2025

The man named Killraven stood atop a small bunker. His team - the Freemen - had been forced to move their base from New Jersey. A veritable battalion of Martian tripods had been found in the area, and Jonathan conceded they had no choice but to move.

The logical place, then, was New York. After all, earth's mightiest heroes had used the city as a battleground many times before the invasion. It seemed pretty sturdy. And now, Jonathan Raven, former gladiator/entertainer for the Martian invaders, watched over this new land.

"What're you thinking?" said a voice from behind him. A female's voice. Her name was T'Chalu, a Wakandan female who had also been taken, and trained as a gladiator for the Martians. Her escape had only come very recently - last month, in fact - but she already liked Killraven.

"Nothing." Raven replied. "It's just -- well, I never thought the Freemen would ever be forced away from New Jersey... no matter what the Martians threw at us."

"But remember, Jonathan," T'Chalu said, in her most comforting tone, "we did put up one heck of a fight."

"Yeah." commented Raven. "I just wish more of us had made it out alive." He cast his thoughts back a week or two, to when the Martians began their newest strike against the Freemen. He'd been scouting the area - his duty for that night - when he'd come across two Tripods. Even though he knew tripods only travelled in packs of three, he hoped someone had taken the third out. Two, he knew he could handle. Three troubled him.

He pulled out a rifle he'd found - a ZX-90, the label said - and blasted down the two tripods. The rifle was brilliant! One blast, and they both smashed into the ground. And then Jonathan returned to the Freemen's hideout. But there, he found thirty-six tripods smashing the place up. He tried to use his rifle, but it was blasted out of his hand. In fact, his entire hand was blasted off. Using his stars, he managed to protect a lot of his team... and in the end they drove the Martians off. But their resources were depleted. They wouldn't be able to stand another attack.

They waited for days to see if the Martians would return. In that time Jonathan was given a replacement, metallic hand, and the Freemen gained their confidence again. But next time, there were forty-five tripods. Far too many for the Freemen to handle. They fled, and gradually made their way to New York.

Surprisingly, they learned that the Martians, who had previously held a huge force in New York, had departed. They met no resistance. But even more surprisingly, they found a hangar beneath the deepest sub-basements of Avengers mansion. It had been blasted open in a Martian battle, it seemed, so the Freemen had no trouble getting in.

But once inside, they made a shocking discovery. The room was filled with corpses. Henry Pym. Janet van Dyne. Heck, even one of Captain America's fingers was down there. They'd been protecting something, it seemed. Something important.

Taking the lead, Jonathan stepped forward, and pushed his way over the macabre flooring. He opened a door, and inside he found something even more shocking then the Avengers' bodies. Clones. Most were dead, their life-tanks blasted open. But two remained alive. One was Henry Pym, the other was the inventive genius known as Tony Stark.

However, try as they might, the Freemen couldn't open the tubes. And finally, T'Chalu lost it, blasting them both open. Tony Stark died on exposure to the air, but Pym survived just long enough to say:

"The Guardians -- !"

The Freemen chose to ignore what had happened. They had seen many strange things in their lives. But they stripped the remains of the sub-sub-basement for anything they could (they couldn't get inside the main sub-basements or the mansion itself) and set up base outside. With metal sheeting they made bunkers. With copper wiring, they managed to give themselves power. But one of the Freeman found something infinitely more valuable then either shelter or power. He found an Avengers ID card.

Some of the Freemen had been alive before the Martian attack. Not all had been born directly into slavery, like Jonathan and T'Chalu. To these people, the ID card was more than a piece of plastic from "before". To them, it was a valuable beacon of hope. If this, part of an Avenger's very being, could survive, maybe they could too.

That was finished yesterday, which brings us back to the conversation between Jonathan and T'Chalu.

"Yeah, we did good." said Jonathan. "But we aren't here to build a happy community. We're here to fight. But there aren't even Martians around to do that with!"

"Maybe the others don't want to fight, Jonathan. Since Maxx found that ID card, everyone, for the first time since I met them, has seemed... happy." T'Chalu responded.

"Well I'm not. Tell the Freemen I'm going hunting." Jonathan said. T'Chalu just nodded. And with that, Jonathan headed off into the night.

31st Century, deep in the Heart of the K-Tor cluster, aboard the Esmyr battlecruiser the Halcyon *

[ * - Anyone who can tell me which Marvel book the K-Tor cluster was in will receive a Gratuitously Gorgeous GG Prize! (Hint: 30 foot tall robots outside the Marvel Universe) - Adrian ]

"Commander, the terran ship is still approaching." said the Esmyrian ship's navigation officer, Espiir.

"Let it come." said the "Commander". "We'll see what they want."

"No!" said the weak voice of a captured human. "They'll kill you the way they want to kill me."

"Silence, human scum!" yelled the commander. "Your kind does not carry the right to speak, after what you did to my people!"

"I'm warning you! You're no match for them!"

"We shall see." said the commander. "They are human, after all. And we have proven our might to be greater than that of you humans', haven't we?"

The captive human nodded. She had seen first hand what the Espmyrian's had done to the humans that had settled on their planet. She knew they were no match for the approaching humans, but they may still put up a fight, even if it was a hopeless one.

"Sir! They're within range of our ion cannons." Espiir said.

"Then fire!"

Gun turrets around the craft all span toward the approaching craft. They began to glow a light blue, then, with an insane, animal screeching, they let fly a barrage of ion blasts. Space lit up a bright blue, and when it faded, all expected the ship to be gone. But it wasn't. It kept approaching, it's shields holding firm.

The Esmyrian craft fired again and again, but each time were met by the same indifference. And finally, the human craft initiated physical contact with them. A cylinder of about seven feet in diameter connected to one of the ship's airlocks, and the Esmyrian craft was boarded..

"I warned you!" yelled the human prisoner. "But you didn't listen. And now you're dead!"

The crew of the human ship marched down the corridors of the Esmyrian ship, striking down anyone who so much as looked at them. There was no-one who could so much as threaten them. They were the mightiest force in the Universe. They were the Punishers.

"Where is the human?" asked the leader of the Punishers, when he made his way to the Esmyrian ship's bridge.

The Esmyrian commander quaked and pointed to where the human prisoner was.

"Esdyn Fai'kor, for crimes against the all powerful Terran Empire, you have been sentenced to death by discorporation." said the lead Punisher. He  raised his gun, and blasted the human into several billion pieces. He returned his ZX-90 rifle to it's leg holster and left, followed by the rest of the Punishers, who had eliminated the rest of the Esmyrian ship's crew. They returned to their own ship again, moved to a computer, opened a communications channel and were greeted by the ugliest, pinkest alien ever encountered.

"Has Fai'kor been eliminated?" it asked. 

"Yes." replied the Punisher's leader. "And with her death, this time period has been cleansed."

"Good. Then make your way to the next period. What was it again?"

"The twenty-first century. The Martianic Era." replied the Punisher commander.

"Ah. Be wary. Your target there is a most powerful foe indeed. Your orders will not be as easy to carry out as they were with this self-styled Seeker." the pink alien replied.

"Yes, but never has a target surpassed us. We are the Punishers, after all."

The pink alien smiled. "Yes... the Punishers! Hahahahaha!"

The Punisher commander closed communications, and ordered that the ship begin it's journey to the twenty-first century. With a flick of a switch, the time drive was powered up, and in a flash of red light the Punishers were gone.

The Blue Area of Earth's Moon, 2025

The S.H.I.E.L.D* lunar base was one of the few structures that managed to hold back the Martian invasion, at least temporarily. Aided by other terran races that had at one time or another lived on the moon - most notably the Inhumans - they managed to survive far longer than the earth bound humans.

[ * - Strategic Hazard Intervention/Espionage Logistics Directorate - "As-if-you-didn't-know"    Adrian ]

And they needed to survive, for they were charged with the most important mission to do with the Martians. They were to produce Tony Stark's Goliath suits. And they succeeded, too. That's why they were able to hold out for so long. But only three years ago, the last surviving lunar SHIELD agent perished, and along with him the legacy of the Goliath suits, and Earth's last hope for freedom.

New York, 2025

BANG! The main door to Avengers Mansion collapsed with a loud groan, and then that bang.

"WOOHOO!" cried T'Chalu. "We're in!"

T'Chalu and the Freemen poured into Avengers Mansion, looking for stuff to take. Most of the building was badly damaged. It could be repaired by someone like Tony Stark or Victor von Doom, no doubt, but they weren't exactly around to help.

Using the ID card, the Freemen were able to explore all areas of the Mansion. And down in one of the sub-basements, they found a machine in perfect working order. A bright red light kept flashing on and off. T'Chalu tried to use it, however it kept asking for 'the code'. They tried everything they thought might be the  code, and in the end Maxx looked at the ID card for help.

"Hey, I wonder what this 1313 means?" he asked.

"Code acknowledged. Please feed your ID card into the slot to retrieve the messages."

Maxx slid the Avengers ID into the only slot on the machine. And suddenly, a face popped up on it's screen. Two, actually. One was a man, a patch over his eye, his careworn face scarred by battle; the other was an android. He had a green body, and a bright red face. Some people recognised him. He was the Vision. The man with the patch spoke.

"Avengers, I sure hope this old machine of yours works." he said. "Anyway, this is Colonel Nick Fury, but you already know that. The Vision here wants to give ya's the rundown on Operation: Badblast."

"Thank you, Colonel." said the Vision. "I hope that Anthony Stark has been able to construct the clones by now, as they will soon be needed. SHIELD has ordered it's lunar base to begin construction of the Goliath and Sorcerie suits, and have developed the matrix data to ensure that only the Avengers can control them, to prevent the Martians from using them. Additionally, the Shi'ar and Skrull forces allied with humans have agreed to send fleets to aid Earth in it's battle.

"If the clones are complete, inform SHIELD immediately, and they'll send them up to the lunar base for use in the battlesuits. We may yet win, Avengers. Vision out."

The message ended.

"Looks like that never went ahead." said M'Shulla Scott, Jonathan's best friend and fellow Freeman. "Because we found Fury's corpse already."

"We did?" T'Chalu asked.

"Well, the Black Panther and I did, when the Freemen fought alongside the surviving Avengers. We hid the corpse."

"The BLACK PANTHER?!?" T'Chalu shrieked. "You met my grandfather?"

"Your grandfather?" M'Shulla asked.

"Guys, can we discuss the Panther later? We've just made a major discovery." said Maxx. "If we can find these battlesuits, we may be able to make a difference in the battle against the Martians."

"But as I said, Fury is dead. The battlesuits don't exist." M'Shulla said. "And even if they did, only the Avengers could control them, remember?"

"We'll see. Where did you bury the corpse?" Maxx asked.

"The Panther took it to the Avengers West compound." M'Shulla said.

"Let's go!" yelled Maxx.

31st Century, a barren moon

"Are they still approaching?" asked an Esmyrian officer, stationed on the moon's military base.

"Yes." said the moon's sensor specialist. "They'll be here within 10 minutes."

"And you're sure these are the guys that destroyed the Halcyon?" the officer asked.

"Yes. They're called the Punishers." replied the sensor specialist.

"The Punishers?" the officer cried. "Why did you not alert me sooner? Contact the Guardians of the Galaxy immediately!"

"Why?" asked the sensor specialist.

"Just do it!" said the officer.

And it was done. The sensor specialist sent a signal to the Guardians' ship, which they had encountered before*. They knew the Guardians would come help soon enough. They were the Guardians, after all.

[ * When did they meet the Guardians? You'll see! - Adrian ]

"The Guardians better come soon. We won't stand a chance..."

New York, 2025

Killraven stormed away from the Freemen's new base of operations. He was determined to catch something for dinner today. The blood lust had been building inside him again. He leaped over rubble and scattered belongings (none of it of any use to the Freemen) and kept going. He'd gotten pretty far away from Avengers Mansion. And, in fact, he was lost, although he would never have admitted it, had any of his fellow Freemen been around.

He slowed down, and began to try to take in his surroundings. He wasn't too concerned that he was so far away from the Freemen's base, but he was concerned about not being able to get back. Another hill, another rise, a knoll, and he found himself standing upon a huge pile of shattered concrete.

From here, he could see pretty far. There was little to obstruct his view; the Martians had levelled just about everything. And he spotted the mansion. But he also spotted... three Tripods! He began to run back to the Mansion. He had to stop that Tripod. But as he turned a corner, a hand - a human hand - grabbed him.

"Raven?" said the owner of the hand.

"Yeah. Now let -" 

A hand struck the side of Jonathan Raven's head, and everything went black.

43rd Century, a palace on a distant moon

"Psy-knight, duck! There's a plasma bolt coming down on your left!" cried the man who called himself Michael Korvac. "Whistler, call back the razors to get Deathwing!" Korvac jumped over a spinning, spiked ball as his team navigated their training gauntlet.

"Spartan, smash the control panel! Blitz, short-out Deathwing's armour!" The team worked well against the holographic threat posed by the armoured villain, Deathwing. He was not really there, of course, it was just a hologram for training use.

Whistler whistled, and his spinning razors curved back toward him, slicing the Deathwing hologram in the process. Psy-knight used his telekinesis to catch and redirect the plasma bolt. Spartan, using his immense strength, smashed the control panel Deathwing used to access his weapons. Blitz. the electrically charged female on the team, shorted out Deathwing's armour, which made him susceptible to the blast from the redirected plasma bolt. When the training simulator turned off, Spartan asked, "So, boss, we ready?"

"Yes, Spartan." Korvac replied. "You, my Guardian Force, are indeed ready."

And elsewhere in the training facility, a captive beyonder screamed.

NEXT: Thor! The Punishers... (or are they?) Doctor Doom! Time travel! An android! And... a cat? (And maybe, if you're really nice, the Guardians might show up!) All that in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #72: "Births, Deaths, and Marriages!"

And, as usual, send any comments, questions, or suggestions to Adrian Watts.

Letters to the Stars

Hey, to all my readers! (All TWO of you :) ). 

That's it, my first issue of Guardians of the Galaxy, in which I cleverly didn't use even one Guardian! Well, I just thought I'd clear one or two things up, to help you if you missed my clever guest spots:

1) The K-Tor Cluster was where the Second Generation Decepticons from Transformers: Generation Two were based.

2) The machine that asked for the access code '1313' was none other than the message bank from the early Avengers issues. We all remember that Hawkeye had trouble remembering the code - which nearly caused the deaths of his fellow Avegers - so it's safe to assume it was his ID card the code was written on.

3) Killraven and the Freemen were in 'Amazing Adventures' for 18 issues, in a story entitled 'War of the Worlds', set as a sequel to  the novel by H.G. Wells. In these stories, Martians returned to Earth, defeated all our heroes (but Guardians readers will know that that  wasn't quite true) cloned us, experimented on us, and bred us for food. Amazing Adventures detailed the plight of Killraven, and showed a great deal of his battle against the Martians.

4) According to Vance Astro, the Martians left Earth in 2075, for an inexplicable reason. But the Badoon came a while later, so it was a shortlived freedom. Maybe the Martians might return again? Who knows? 

5) Yes, the Punishers were all defeated by the Guardians, but as was revealed in Mark Beaulieu's run on GotG, we were slightly misled there... :)

- Adrian Watts, April 2001

A "Free Man"

Ahhh! Only a month until the Martians arrive! Hide the children!